


Da Capo al Fine

by chemicalflashes



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Rebuild of Evangelion | Evangelion: New Theatrical Edition
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Loop Theory, Rebuild of Evangelion Sequel/Time Loop Theory, musings, suggestive of Shinji/Asuka but you'll see it only when you squint, what can be in 4.0
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:48:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25976977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chemicalflashes/pseuds/chemicalflashes
Summary: He's a tired boy with brown hair and cobalt eyes. She doesn't understand him, but he drinks his coffee black and runs a hand through his hair, anyway.[About Shinji, his thoughts and the cycles that pass.]
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 13





	Da Capo al Fine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shinjeeeeeeeeeeee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinjeeeeeeeeeeee/gifts).



> I wrote this when 4.0's official name (Thrice Upon A Time) was released to the public. This had been sitting in my Google Docs, supposedly forgotten but I found it while cleaning out my drive and decided to post it. This story tells of all the ways I have ever thought of Loop Theory.
> 
> Da Capo al Fine (often abbreviated as D.C./Da Capo) is an instruction in musical scores that says to repeat from the beginning.
> 
> This is dedicated to my friend with whom I have had many fun and fruitful discussions about 4.0. I know we haven't talked in a while but I hope you can forgive me for that.

> _No I won't fall apart_
> 
> _Whenever the sea starts_
> 
> _Its holy endeavour_
> 
> **_— Fade In Nylon, A Beacon School_ **

  
  


After the end, he's just a tired boy with brown hair and hardened cobalt eyes.

Two people stand at a sea shore. He's one of them.

"Do you _hear_ the sea?" the other one asks. The wind blows her ginger hair gently, and one of her hands keeps moving up to tuck her unruly strands behind her ear. His fingers clench in his pockets and his blue pullover crinkles over where his arms are bent and his mouth remains as taut as a string carrying a soaring kite.

His voice is cool and rough as it climbs up his throat, almost like gravel; the practised indifference oozes. "I am standing right where I can see it. _Of course_ I hear it. What sort of a question is that?"

The contempt that had been barely visible in her question rears its ugly head upon him now. "Oh, you _know_ , your constant blabbering about their voices telling you how they'll return."

Shinji just turns his head away. "There's no need for you to taunt me."

Asuka has an unkind smirk the size of his fist lined across her face. He can see it in his mind; he can hear it as she speaks.

"You know that I am right. We're stranded here. There's no one coming back."

_No, you aren't. You can't be. Please._

Lilith's head smiles eerily in the distance.

* * *

Just before the end, he's just a tired boy with brown hair and half-lidded cobalt eyes.

Three people walk in a barren, red desert. He's one of them. He doesn't want to walk. His only desire is to curl up in a corner and _die_. He's no good for anything. He never will be. There are two girls and one of them, the ginger one, is hell bent upon getting him to walk to wherever it is that they're all walking to. The other girl, the one with the unnatural blue hair, stays silent and looks at her feet.

"Walk, you idiot, damn it!" the redhead hisses as she drags his halfhearted body.

"Asuka," he whispers, "it's no use."

She stops altogether. Contempt grips her face.

"I'll _never_ forgive you if you stop now, after what all you have done. And it's Captain Shikinami for you!"

Shinji hobbles forward.

* * *

Just before the end, he's just a tired boy with brown hair and teary cobalt eyes.

A woman in a red jacket drags him along Nerv's underground corridors. She's hell bent. She pushes him against an elevator and forces him to listen about having choices and accepting those choices. It makes his blood boil.

"But you're not me! You don't know what I have to go through! You don't understand!"

She pushes him harder against the elevator with fists grabbing onto his collar.

"So fucking what if I'm not you!" she says. "That doesn't mean it's okay for you to give up! If you do, I'll _never_ forgive you as long as I live!"

He looks away. She's dying.

When he falls into the elevator after she kisses him, Shinji still can't bring himself to do anything that Misato has told him to do.

* * *

Just before the end, he's just a tired boy with brown hair and sad brown eyes.

He sits curled over himself like a fetus under a staircase somewhere in Nerv. There's no use being alive now. Toji is dead; he killed him. Asuka is almost dead. Rei is something inhuman.

He killed Kaworu too — the strange but somehow warm boy who wanted to be his friend.

When his father saves him from the JSSDF hostiles using an AT Field, he doesn't even blink. The world and its logic have gone to shit now. Then Misato comes barging in and Shinji doesn't know what he feels about being saved from his own father. But there's one thing that he definitely knows that he has to do once she pushes him into the elevator.

He will carry out his guardian's last wishes and help Asuka. He screams at his mother to wake up.

* * *

At the end, he's just a tired boy with brown hair and empty cobalt eyes.

She squirms beneath him, prone in her plugsuit and somehow, she manages to push him off her. The entire situation is utterly disgusting. When she glares at him, he looks away and murmurs, "I am sorry."

As if that's going to fix anything.

Their days and nights meld into each other and they all feel the same. Days become weeks and weeks become months and Shinji tries his best to not wish to go back to the LCL sea. Asuka has no hope for the others. She watches him with eyes narrowed by contempt. He knows her conclusions are wrong. It's just an intuition, but it's a pretty strong one.

She doesn't understand humanity, but he drinks his coffee black and runs a hand through his hair; he doesn't pretend to understand it either.

Waiting was never supposed to be peaceful, anyway.

* * *

Much before the end, he's just a little boy with brown hair and downcast cobalt eyes who picks up the cello because his teacher tells him to.

For some reason that he absolutely cannot fathom, the repeat signs at the end of the scores mock him. Sometimes they're just a symbol, sometimes there's 'd.c.' written in italics that lets him know that he has to repeat from the beginning. 

"Repeat; you didn't do well enough the first time around," they seem to tell him.

They spook him out. They comfort him.

(He looks at the creases of his palm and decides that he's thinking too much.)

* * *

A bit before the end, he somehow dreams that he has seen Kaworu sacrificing himself... _before._ He doesn’t say it when Shikinami screams at him to stop his cries.

He cannot stop overthinking about the figments of his imagination and when she frowns at him in the evening glow of the red desert, resignation sings through her stance.

* * *

Somewhere in between it all, he's a boy who has seen too much.

* * *

After the end, he's just a tired boy with brown hair and surprised cobalt eyes.

There's an ethereal, white light all around them. Asuka looks at him with wide eyes. Something descends upon the barren landscape in the distance. The air glitches, thrums with electric static and they both almost freeze.

It’s all white.

_(The cassette player plays the same song over and over, and he frowns.)_

* * *

He's a tired boy with brown hair and cobalt eyes.

She doesn't understand him, but he drinks his coffee black and runs a hand through his hair, anyway. He has seen her thrice before (but he doesn’t realise that) and he doesn’t understand her either. But that's okay.

Both of them don’t remember how they _know_ each other. They had met at the station and become acquaintances at the high school they attend.

People around the world are talking of the Remnants that have supposedly been left behind by _someone_. He knows she doesn’t like talking about them and he doesn’t bring up the evergreen topic while they sip their coffee, waiting for the current hailstorm to subside.

She picks up something from the table in between them. It’s the odd, cross-shaped pendant that he carries around everywhere and there’s a spark dancing in her eyes.

“Well, this is a new beginning,” she tells him. He nods and looks at the snow falling outside.

He knows the cassette player in his bag stopped functioning a while ago.  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> When will 4.0 actually release? Ughhhhhhhh.


End file.
